Eldred couldn’t read her mind; his voice resounded as if from within her own head, but if she wanted to be audible to him, she had to at least mumble in her smallest voice. It was unlikely anyone would make out what she said over the bustle of the market, but she was conscious all the same of the many eyes and ears around her.
“You do know what the Circuit of Destiny is, I assume.”
The Circuit of Destiny was a device built by joining together multiple Power generators, and it was said to be able to predict the future. It was one of the greatest treasures of the Empire. In theory, it was her professors at the Imperial Academy who would have been designing and maintaining a machine like this, but in all her years there, she’d never heard it spoken of in an official capacity. Some rumors said that it was housed in the basement of the Senate, others that it was kept in the underground dungeons of the Office of Truth. And still others, of course, claimed that it was just a lie, made up by this Imperial ministry or that to scare the enemies of the Empire.
“I know what they say it is. But it really exists?”
“I have business to attend to with the Circuit.”
Of course you had your own agenda,Arienne thought. Eldred had promised her freedom and the chance to learn real sorcery, but for now, getting somewhere safe had to take priority. If she was caught, she would be promptly turned into a Power generator herself for her transgressions, shut away for eternity in a lead coffin, a worse fate than if she’d not run away in the first place. She didn’t know what that would mean for Eldred, who was hidden away inside her mind, but he didn’t seem as worried as he should be.
“One false move, and I—we!—will be caught. I have to get out of the Capital and as far away from the Imperial heartland as possible.” Despite having just said this, she had no idea where she would run.
“Are you not a sorcerer yourself? Running away is easy, and it won’t be too late to leave after having dropped in on the Senate. A Phaidian shapeshifter could turn into a bird and fly away. A death priest of Thiopscould become a shadow. A Cassian geomancer could shrink the earth and leap over it. A highamritof Varata has prodigious strength and is virtually impervious to weapons. You’re young, and I know that school of yours teaches nothing worthwhile, but surely you have a few tricks mastered on your own by now?”
Arienne didn’t reply. She knew the names of all the provinces from her geography classes, but she didn’t recognize the words that presumably referred to old-magic sorcerers of those lands. To her, the feats Eldred listed were only the stuff of storybooks.
“Maybe such spells are too sophisticated for you. In which case I hope you’re a fast runner, and a good killer. But there must be something you know how to do.”
“I can light fires.”
“Pyromancy. The Farovian art. A talent as useful as it is common.”
“No, I mean, I can… light candles.”
“And?”Eldred’s voice was filled with suspicion.
“I can make someone who’s sleeping go deeper into sleep. That’s it. And that other thing you taught me.”
In the room inside her mind, Eldred, wrapped in his bandages, raised his head.
“Is that all you’ve learned during six years of school? I know you failed three of them, but…”
Arienne had nothing to say to that. She’d come to think of her division at the Imperial Academy as just storage for warm bodies—a place that trained young sorcerers how to best take care of themselves, ahead of their eventual task of becoming Power generators in death. Their education, if you could call it that, was largely to do with keeping your body and mind in a certain state, with some knowledge of the manufacture and maintenance of generators thrown in for variety. There was no benefit to the Empire for sorcerers to learn combat spells, or really anything that would become useful in an escape situation.
After a silence, Eldred said,“You can create and maintain a room like this in your mind, so you are clearly a sorcerer of talent. Perhaps not a great one for the ages, but at least a bit better than most. If there is nothing else you have learned, I shall teach you a thing or two. It will help us both with the task ahead.”
A Power generator that should have no thoughts or a will of its own was offering to teach her sorcery, and had actually taught her some already. Were the memories from his life intact? How? And how much of them? The basic facts of the dead sorcerer’s life would have been engraved in the lead coffin, per regulation. Arienne regretted not having time to take a closer look before they’d had to flee.
“So. Are you able to learn if you’re taught, little one?”
Arienne waited until a passerby was out of earshot.
“Yes. I am.”
“Good. For you shall not be of much use to me as things are.”
Eldred lowered his head and was silent once more.
Arienne recalled the broken skeleton at the foot of the spiral staircase in the main hall. The remains of someone who hadn’t been of much use to Eldred five years ago. Arienne had been only a year into her education at the time but vaguely remembered hearing about a student who had supposedly escaped that year. She could not remember their name, as hard as she tried.
What was Eldred going to do once he got to the Circuit of Destiny? Arienne imagined him standing in a white room, wrapped in bandages, scores of coffins spread out at his feet. She did not actuallyknow what the Circuit of Destiny would look like, or whether the room would indeed be blinding white, like the corridor she’d crossed to reach Eldred, or impossibly black, like the hole through which he’d entered the room in her mind.
Arienne continued to picture the Circuit of Destiny, and in her mind envisioned a tea shop waiter with a silver platter in hand, winding his way around Powered coffins as he approaches Eldred. Arienne is standing by his side, watching him. A folded piece of paper rests on the platter—“Your prophecy, sir,” says the man as he presents the note to Eldred with a little bow. Eldred nods and unfolds the paper and reads it. His bandages begin peeling off. He is very thin, his skin as dry as a parchment and looking like it would crumble if she were to reach out and touch him. As Eldred reads the prophecy, a satisfied smile cracks his face. Then, he turns to Arienne and says, “Now I shall have my revenge.”
Arienne was surprised by her own imagination.Revenge.Why did that word, of all words, come to mind?
But just then, a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts, rising over the noise of the market and coming from the other side of the square.
